I’m at a park because I needed the gentle touch of greenery. But this is not nature. It’s completely fabricated, a manicured juxtaposition of imported trees and three inch tall grass. My native ancestors would recognize nothing here. Nature is wild and overgrown in a perfect symbiosis of cycles and species that looks like chaos to the human eye. She is fiercely powerful and infinitely nourishing. She is the quintessential archetype of femininity. Isn’t it just like the world, so pompous with civility, to arrange nature in these controlled sections to appease its sterile aesthetic. Just like society, to subjugate the wild untamed ferocity of a woman into a more predictable, socially acceptable role. But still, she grows.

When my cycle came to me this month, everything in my body tensed up with fearful anticipation. Over the past several months, my time has been an unusually excruciating and debilitating experience. I thought, “Oh no, here we go again.” But then I remembered what a consistent friend she has always been. For years she has come to visit like a guest from the moon, and my body has always received her with varying degrees of indifference or annoyance. It’s no wonder my visitor has arrived angry lately. So I greeted the wild bloody deva differently this time. Recognizing her recent need to be loud, to be felt, to express, I hopped on my big cherry-red motorcycle and we rode full speed towards the red sunset that painted the sky crimson between night and day like the tide between my thighs. It was the first day of Navaratri, the yearly Hindu celebration of the Goddess. And by God, if the Goddess wanted to physically incarnate through my womb, I would invite her hospitably. Left hand over my uterus, right hand on the throttle, the redfriend and I howled together at the top of our lungs over the loud roar of the engine. We made primal noises channeled from the throats of our foremothers and agreed from that moment forward to be allies. That night, I lay my head to sleep on a red satin pillow and dreamed of my mother.

The following day my redfriend and I made a pilgrimage to the top of a local mountain to offer lifeblood back to the soil womb of mother nature. We claimed our own little red tent under a tree whose leaves were turning red with its autumn cycle. And we communed these cycles that are so much larger than us. These seasons move all trees, like the moon moves all women, weaving us together in an immortal fabric. These constants are our ties to time immemorial and they live through us — larger than us, yet meeting us right where we greet them. This wine-red tree taught me to embrace the coming crimson time with more grace and patience, and I nourished her roots with a sanguine gift for that. In the evening I dressed in a long maroon gown, held a little African statue of a moon goddess like a doll, and ate artisan rose chocolate while listening to “The Red Tent”. I mourned for the lost essence of womanhood in our culture.

The first pangs of dysmenorrhoea began. I started to brace myself for an onslaught of pain, then reconsidered. Instead, I felt deeply into the sensation at the core of my being. This epicenter of life that anchors me to this body and this body to its place in a lineage of generations, demanded recognition. So I listened. I heard the screams of women being burned at the stake for their prowess and laughter. I saw the wounds of women beaten by husbands and fathers. I felt the pain of the mothers of young soldiers killed in battle since the dawn of war. Women have been punished for their gender since the first primal truth was forgotten.

And still, the Goddess surges forth every month, calling through the veils of an amnesiac species, hearkening to the presence of the abandoned Goddess. Still, blood surges forth, vainly seeking soil to appease the bloodthirsty earth, so men will no longer spill their blood on the ground in war. Still, she bears the elixir of life into the sacred centers of her daughters, blushing our thighs. Yet… still… she is silenced. Her cries are muffled by the bleached white pesticide-laden cotton shoved down her throats. Her passion is drowned out in synthetic hormones, muting her bright palette and confusing her instincts. She is strictly taboo. It’s not polite to talk about the blood of life, the source of fertility, the monthly price of our existence. And it is no wonder then, that our very human existence is in peril when we do not pay this red rent back the the Earth as all humans have done until very very nearby in timespace.

I felt deeply into the pain. Past the pain, I felt the wound in the collective memory. I found those grandmothers and great grandmothers in my DNA. I held them in my womb and nourished them there, as a uterus is made to do. My husband kissed my belly, acknowledging the ancient rift between masculine and feminine, healing it with his love and tenderness. The pain subsided. This had never happened before. When cramps came, they would torture my body for at least a full day. But from start to finish, this discomfort lasted perhaps an hour, was entirely bearable, and did not return. The next night I danced and howled with wild girlfriends, alive to our femininity in ways our foremothers could not have been for many generations. We laughed, utterly aware and grateful for the freedom to do so.

At this juncture in history, we are honored with the charge of healing masculine and feminine dynamics on this planet. This quintessential shift is the keystone to peace on Earth. It is the original duality that distracted us from oneness, and restoring it to balance is integral to awakening Unity Consciousness. At this juncture in the grand cosmic timeline, Earth is moving into the photon belt, where we will be showered with more stellar light and, according to the legends, embark on an era of literal enlightenment. This means collectively healing the shadows of our past. Darkness cannot be healed until it is brought to the light. What is hidden cannot be made whole. By becoming “conscious” we agree to the inner work of delving into the subconscious, bearing the light of awareness to illumine what we find. You do not have to be fearless to embark on this adventure, merely to shine a light on your fear and make it your ally. It is a personal journey with collective benefits that ripple through the web of life.

Jung said, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” Never again should women accept the fate of subjugation. Never again should the subconscious patterns of masculine/feminine dynamics be a source of pain for anyone. The karmas of countless lifetimes are arising in us now to be atoned. We can no longer hide behind “taboo”, allowing what culture calls “inappropriate” to be a blind spot in our awareness. That’s the default autopilot setting that civility has kindly equipped us with so that we can move unaware through lives of conformity. But behind that label is a world of human experience begging rediscovery. Once a month, mother nature moves half the population. She sweeps a unifying red brushstroke through the center of us all. We have forgotten how to meet under the sacred canvas of a red tent. Until now. This is an invitation to shine a light on the shadow of this shared experience and make it our ally.

The value of feminine radiance, softness, sensuality, ferocity, and cycles have been lost in a wash of sterility, predictability, straight lines and demure manners. But never mind that every single republican in the senate recently voted against equally pay between genders for equal work (for the third time in two years). Nevermind that a woman’s value is determined first by her appearance, and second by her merit. Nevermind that at least one in three women in the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Nevermind the tidal wave of militant feminist women turning against fellow women, holding them to dogmatic standards of conservative attire and masculine values. Nevermind it all. This is what we know, this is what we can individually touch with our bare hands: The goddess still surges forth, red and messy and untamed. She still cries out with the impassioned truthful voice of pre-menstruation. She is alive in the very center of every one of us, linking us to our mothers and our daughters and each other. It’s up to us to reclaim the sanctity of womanhood. I learned this month that we have the power to befriend our redmoon and use it as a link that can channel healing in an umbilical spiral of ancestral memory that defies the bounds of linear time. We are the medicine woman, and this is our task. Our wombs are the source of life. Our yonis are the spice of life. Let no one forget it.